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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Saturday, July 13, 2013

The Fear Chamber (1968)

A scientist and his assistants discover a creature made of living rock underground that feeds on the chemical generated in the human body when experiencing extreme terror.
According to IMDB, this is one of a quartet of horror films made in Mexico that incorporated scenes featuring Boris Karloff filmed in America by director Jack Hill. They would be among Karloff's last films, and do not have a reputation of quality. This one is certainly watchable, and does an effective job of presenting the terror-filled "fear chamber" the scientists create to shock young women into providing the chemical to feed the creature. However, while Karloff is always worth watching, the rest of the film doesn't measure up, with poor special effects standing in for the creature, and the transformation of a dimwitted lab assistant into the movie's central villain coming off as pretty comical.